There are parts of this video that felt very much like Pro-Monsanto propaganda, though I think the feel was supposed to feel non-biased.

The idea that anyone should be able to patent natural living organisms is plain wrong in my opinion. It wasn't theirs to start with.

So when I hear that they can patent variations or modificatioons, then I start to worry about what happens when the Modified version overtakes and eliminates the natural organism. Using Corn as an example, It's just a matter of time before natural organisms will no longer exist. At least not the ones that we use.

So basically, it's just a waiting game that corporations with the money and technology have to play before they will, in the end, own everything.

Morally wrong in the end.

Did anyone else notice the ticker scroll?

Bayer -12.9%
Monsanto -26.5%
BP -66.2%
Heckler & Koch -86.1%

That's one really bad day.

While I'm in no position to buy from Monsanto, and don't know enough to advocate for or against them, the troubling impression I have of them is their business practices. This is why I had a quick look through that contract analysis.

It reminded me of something I am familiar with: software. You often have clauses that prohibit analysis or reverse engineering of software. Like the farmer doing the Monsanto contract analysis I [almost always] have no interest in doing that reverse engineering, but I definitely want others to be able to so they can look for things like security holes.

Having the attitude of 'this contract is fine because it doesn't restrict me from anything I want or would expect to do' is completely understandable, but can hide some of the real issues.

I love the Kurzgesagt videos, and again here they impress me by mentioning the issues with these companies, while completely separating it from the issue being analysed.

Monsanto is like Microsoft... they are these hulking titans of their respective industries, who work as hard as they can to stay ahead of the game, sometimes through questionable activities. However, their contributions on the whole are incredible, driving generations of progress in their respective fields through investment, research, and release of progressively more useful tools (on the whole).

There is a similar debate regarding pharmaceutical companies and their profiteering from the invention of life saving drugs... its easy to paint a company as a 'bad guy' for charging large amounts of money for medicine that a person needs to live. But is it the company's responsibility to forgo shareholder profits in order to maximally help more people with their drug, or is it the spectrum of regulations imposed by a representative government that should be entrusted with that responsibility?

GMO agriculture products that are drought tolerant, flood tolerant, self pollenating, etc etc, will likely save our buns in the next 100 years. If anything we should be doubling down on how much effort we put into GMO production and selection, to help drive a technological boom in that industry before we've mismanaged ourselves into a crisis.

Thank you for sharing your perspective, @MilkmanDan!

Here is a link from a farmer detailing what is in one of those license agreements, including a copy of one:

http://thefarmerslife.com/whats-in-a-monsanto-contract/

"That’s what we have to agree to in order to make use of Monsanto’s biotechnology on our farm. I don’t see anything in there that hurts my farm. Neither does Iowa farmer Dave Walton. I don’t have to buy their herbicides, and I don’t have to buy anything from them next year if I don’t want to. The biggest problem I have with seed companies is that it seems like they phase out a variety from time to time that is a really strong performer on our farm. "

**EDIT**
I'm finding other sources that say that sterile "terminator seeds" are a patented technique, but that Monsanto has promised not to use it. Straight from the horse's mouth:
http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/pages/terminator-seeds.aspx

So it appears that my info below is wrong. I will try to talk with my family and get the full story. That being said, I'll leave my original comment and the followup below unaltered.
*********


My firsthand knowledge of this stuff was from more than 10 years ago, and also when I was pretty young (early 20's). So I did some web searching to try to get updated since your question is a very interesting one:

http://web.mit.edu/demoscience/Monsanto/about.html

According to that, Monsanto is the company behind "Roundup Ready", and their corn (and other crops in the line) do use sterile "terminator seeds". It also mentions that farmers "must purchase the most recent strain of seed from Monsanto" each year.

I was never in the decision-making structure of my family farm, but I did remember that we couldn't just buy the Roundup Ready seed *once* and then hold a small amount back as seed for the next year and continue to get the benefits.

I'm not 100% sure exactly how the modification for sterility works -- I don't know if the plant will sprout if you plant the sterile seeds and just fail to produce any ears / fruit, or if it just won't germinate at all. I do remember that we had to be quite careful to fully clean out the corn grown from the GM seeds from our storage bins, and better yet to store our non-GM corn to be used for future seed in entirely different bins. That was done to make sure that we didn't end up planting any of the sterile stuff.

I'm sure that the seed dealers that sell the GM stuff really push farmers to buy and plant it every year, as hinted to in that link. But you certainly don't *have* to. On the other hand, if you go back to non-GM seed for a year or two or more, you can't use a strong herbicide like Roundup if you have an unexpected outbreak of weeds or other pest plants -- the Roundup would kill the non-GM crop along with everything else.

Basically, I don't specifically begrudge companies like Monsanto for their practices concerning these GM crops. The "terminator seeds" are controversial, but don't seem like a big deal to me. If you could buy GM seeds once and then just hold back some of your harvest for next season's seed, they'd only get your money once AND we'd probably lose the original strains. So I see that as kinda win-win, especially if you don't 100% buy into their sales department urging you to use GM seed every single year.

I don't want to sound like a shill for Monsanto -- some of their other practices are pretty shady, particularly political lobbying. But from the perspective of my family farm, the GM corn that we use was/is a real beneficial thing. Significantly less pesticide/herbicide use over time, and it allows for expanded low/no till farming. Before herbicides, tilling was one of the only ways to kill off pest plants. But, it also makes the fields lose some moisture and nutrients. Expanded farming and ubiquitous tilling was largely the cause of the "dust bowl" dirty 30's. Anyway, I'd say that a lot of good has come out of modernized techniques and technology like GM crops.

In first world countries....yes, or close to that much. Agreed. Not world wide.

Mechanized harvest is accepted in "natural" old school farming. Agreed, it would fall under the "industrial farming" methods, but is one of the least damaging.
>1000 acre farms do not count as "family farms" in my eyes, even if they are owned by a single family. So is Walmart, but it's not a mom and pop or family store.

Again, mechanization is not the same as industrialization, but does still do damage by over plowing, etc. I'm talking about monoculture crops, over application of man made fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. Grain was farmed "by hand" since farming existed with few problems, but more work involved. The work it takes to rehab a river system because industrial farming runoff contaminated and killed it is FAR more work than the extra work involved in farming using old school methods (which does not mean everything is done with hands, tools and machines have been in use for eons).

Roundup doesn't "break down" completely, and doesn't break down at all if it's washed into river systems and out of the UV light.

Once again, machines aren't all of "industrial farming", they are one of the least damaging facets, and they are not unknown in old school, smaller farming techniques. BUT....overuse of heavy equipment either over packs the soil, making it produce far less, or over plows the soil, making it run off and blow away (see the dust bowl). If it was ONLY about machinery, and ONLY industrial farming used machines, you would have a point, but neither is true.

No, actually overproducing on a piece of land like that makes it unusable quickly and new farm land is needed to replace it while it recuperates (if it ever can). Chemical fertilizers add salts that kill beneficial bacteria, "killing" the soil, sometimes permanently. producing double or triple the amount of food on the same land is beneficial in the extreme short term, and disastrous in the barely long term. (See 'dust bowl')

Man power is far less damaging to the environment than fossil fuels for the same amount of energy. Also, the people would use no more resources because they're in the field than they would anywhere else, so there's NO net gain to the energy used or demand on the environment if they farm instead of sit at a desk, but machines don't use energy when idle, so there is a net loss to the energy required if you replace them with pre-existing people.

Yes, you quoted it directly, buy your characterization of what that meant was insane. You claim they said Monsanto worked on the project (and other things) because they're evil and want to do evil and harm. The video actually said they do these things without much care for the negative consequences to others, and that makes them evil. I hope you can comprehend the distinct difference in those statements, and that your portrayal of what they said is not honest.

@newtboy,
Some, (very few) still grow grain using old school methods, some even using old school grains (thank goodness, we will have them to thank for still having grains when/if the Monsanto grains fail). It's not even 99%, but it is 'most'.

If you count your numbers by production it's probably more than 99% fall under your idea of 'industrial'. If you want to count old school methods as no chemicals for pest control and harvesting by hand then you need 20 some old school farms to match the quantity of food produced on one thousand acre family farm.

Clearly, natural farming takes more effort, and costs the consumer more, but does not require major ecological mitigation, so if you count ALL costs involved, it's not that much more expensive.
Can you explain the ecological mitigation costs you imagine are associated with farming a thousand acres of grain by hand versus using modern equipment and some round-up? The round-up breaks down within days of application and the equipment doesn't impact the land any more than having 20 some people marching through on foot. For bonus points include the ecological foot print of everybody required to work the land in both scenarios. Including that makes it glaringly obvious that the efficiency of what you class 'industrial' farming techniques is on the whole much better on the planet. Of course, it shouldn't be a surprise producing double and triple the amount of food from the same land with a fraction of the manpower means less overall demand on the environment.

As for the propaganda in the vid, you claimed I misrepresented the Manhattan presentation, I quoted the video verbatim. I'm not interested in doing the same for every point they ran. The video is propaganda of the purest form and I stand by that.

Twice what my family eats...but yes, a small subsistence farm could also be called a garden, just as my orchard of 30+ apple trees could be called a back yard. That doesn't make it produce any less.

Not true. Some, (very few) still grow grain using old school methods, some even using old school grains (thank goodness, we will have them to thank for still having grains when/if the Monsanto grains fail). It's not even 99%, but it is 'most'.

Industrial farming describes a methodology, not a size, not an incorporation. The fact that a single person or two might farm thousands of acres means they are using the same industrial methods, because non industrial farming takes more people.

Clearly, natural farming takes more effort, and costs the consumer more, but does not require major ecological mitigation, so if you count ALL costs involved, it's not that much more expensive. You act like it's impossible, but it's how ALL farms operated prior to the mid century. If it wouldn't scale, please explain how it worked for thousands of years before industrial agriculture started, or how it continues to work in other countries.

It may not work for WEAK shallow root grain crops that can't compete for water and nutrients, like the one's Monsanto sells. It worked fine for thousands of years with more natural, long root crops that also held the soil together.

I didn't hear that in the video, but fine. Don't just repeat known BS and lies then. Roundup is only a pesticide in that it allows GMO crops that have modified genes to be pesticides themselves to grow without competition....and that doesn't count, and I think you know it.

No, I'm not trying to say the video is perfectly honest, it's clearly highly biased...I didn't say that. They do HINT that Monsanto's actions are "evil", but extrapolating and exaggerating from their already somewhat overboard, clearly biased but careful statements to make them insanely more overboard and biased is not helpful to anyone.

You mean this characterization..."You know, on account of them being evil and wanting to see millions of people dead because it gives their corporate heads joy. Just like it wanted to invent pesticides as a means of convincing the public to poison each other for giggles, and getting the state department to experiment on people."
Um...yeah....that's completely insane. I already explained why it's wrong in so many ways, and defy you to show where they said anything resembling that. You have to listen with quite a biased ear to hear that in between the lines of what they actually said, and one must be incredibly, clinically paranoid to believe any public company does things just to be evil rather than purely for profit. The evil they do is an accepted result of their business methods, not the intent of their business, and I think the video was fairly clear about that.

You may stand by that, as I stand by my summation of your comment...that it's insane and exaggerated hyperbole that ridicules an extreme paranoid stance no one actually took.

@newtboy

If you are only growing twice what you can eat yourself, you are describing a large garden, not a farm.

More over, what you class as 'industrial' farming is in fact the entirety of all grain farming. If there is a place in farming for wheat, corn, soy, canola and so on, 99% of it is done on what you class 'industrial' farming.

Your typical family farm is over a thousand acres today. If I go out and start naming the family farms of just friends and family I know, I can come up with 30-40+. They all farm over a thousand acres, they use tractors and combines and they make a fair bit more food than twice what they can eat. They aren't the ultra rich land barons that your 'industrial' moniker would imply either, at most they have a singular hired hand to help out with the work. The ones with children interested in taking over often don't need to hire anyone at all.

If you want to abandon that agricultural production and the methods used you mean raising the cost of production more than 100 times over. I can't even fathom the cost of weeding a thousand acres of wheat by hand, let alone removing grasshoppers from a corn crop that way. I'm sorry, but what works for your garden doesn't scale to grain crops.

Oh, and the conflation of herbicide and pesticide was done by the fear monger crowd. Listing round-up as a chemical that only kills plants and not insects and animals didn't fit their agenda so now everything is supposed to be called a pesticide across the board. Maybe that's just a Canadian thing, but the bottom line is that if you had a crop completely over run with insects you could spray it once a day with stupidly high concentrations of round-up and the water in the sprayer would do about the same damage to the insects as would the round up.


As for the video's other claims, I stand by my characterisation. You can't honestly tell me the video is trying to put forward on open and honest picture of Monsanto's actions and history. For example, the Manhattan Project, here's a transcription for clarity:
"Monsanto head Charles Allen Thomas was called to the pentagon not only asked to join the Manhattan project, but to lead it as it's co-director. Thomas put Monsanto's central research department hard to work building the atomic bomb.Fully aware of the implications of the task the budding empire sealed it's relationship with the inner cicrcles of washington with two fateful days in Japan.
"
- queue clip of nuclear blasts-

I think I stand by my summation.

That is clearly not true. It may be one of the less toxic human made functioning, profitable herbicides, but that's not what you said by far.

Roundup is not a pesticide, it's an herbicide. Conflating it with pesticides is ridiculous and incredibly misleading. Roundup is used to control weeds and remove genetic 'contamination' of specific crops. EDIT: Many of those crops are genetically modified to act as pesticides without spraying chemicals, which is a good reason to want to limit cross contamination in either direction.

Other alternatives are no chemicals at all, or only ecologically safe (usually natural) chemicals. I don't use chemicals on my farm, I weed, I spray horticulture oil, I spread ashes, I grow twice what I can eat so some loss to insects won't matter, and I remove insects, slugs, and snails by hand. It takes more work, but the statement that the only alternative to Roundup is worse chemicals or agriculture collapse is completely and obviously false and indicates a total ignorance of the issue you speak about.

"Modern Agriculture" today means hydroponics, aeroponics, and aquaponics, none of which can benefit a whit from Roundup. You mean to say "Industrial Agriculture". The collapse of industrial agriculture might not be a bad thing, as it's incredibly destructive and produces a sub par product. More people farming on smaller farms puts more people to work, makes better product, and makes the people who work on the land feel responsible for it's upkeep, not consider it a resource to be exploited as efficiently as possible.

Mentioning Monsanto's involvement in the project is not the same as saying "neither Einstein or Openheimer or others were behind the Manhattan project, it was Monsanto all along that plotted to destroy Japanese cities with nuclear weapons". They clearly implied that Monsanto joined the project as a way to 'cozy up to' the political elite, and it worked.

Where did you hear this ridiculous hypothesis about their motive? Do you see and hear things that other people don't see and hear? It's clear that the motive in all cases was profit, either directly, or future profits secured by 'making friends' in government by cooperating with them or by forcing farmers into untenable contracts and positions where, in some cases, farmers that don't use Monsanto crops were sued because Monsanto said the pollen that pollinated the crops came from a neighbors Monsanto crops, so the seed belongs to Monsanto. Monsanto does not set out to cause damage and harm, they simply don't care if it happens as a side effect of their profit making methods, which they will protect with any means possible.

Just wow, a more deliberately misleading description of the video would be hard to create.

This propaganda ignores much more than that. Roundup is one of the absolutely least toxic to human chemicals that agriculture can use. The alternatives are chemicals a lot more harmful than roundup or abandoning the use of pesticides. Worse chemicals or the collapse of modern agriculture don't look appealing as alternatives so the ignorant roundup fear mongers protest too much in my opinion.

And then there's things like claiming neither Einstein or Openheimer or others were behind the Manhattan project, it was Monsanto all along that plotted to destroy Japanese cities with nuclear weapons. You know, on account of them being evil and wanting to see millions of people dead because it gives their corporate heads joy. Just like it wanted to invent pesticides as a means of convincing the public to poison each other for giggles, and getting the state department to experiment on people. None of this had any other motive than the thrill of inflicting cruelty on people, and none of it would have happened but for Monsanto's hard drive to push for these things to be done...

Just wow, a more deliberately misleading video would be hard to create.

its really not that simple.

Can roundup cause cancer? Well, I wouldn't recommend drinking it.

WILL it cause cancer? Eh, not really.

His lady needs to understand the difference between "hazard" and "risk".
http://www.wired.com/2016/05/monsantos-roundup-herbicide-cause-cancer-not-controversy-explained/

And bacon doesn't cause cancer either.

We all have our biases.

Conservatives are likely to believe conspiracy nonsense that appeals to their biases (Obama is a muslim/kenyan/communist, etc).

And progressives are just as likely to believe conspiracy nonsense that appeals to their biases (see: anything to do with monsanto).

The trick is acknowledging your biases and fact checking anyway.

I wasn't kidding about automating that. If someone could write a browser plug-in that detected when you were submitting a URL to twitter or facebook and ran it against a snopes-style DB, that would be a boon for humanity.